Sports betting: Africa’s hard tackle

EDITOR:

Bob Koigi, Nairobi

In what has become testament to growing frustration by a majority of the young population in Africa, scenes of sprouting betting shops, slot machines, online gaming and casinos are quickly turning into a common phenomenon across the continent, luring the youth with the promise of making a quick and hustle free buck.

But beyond this promise, is a catalogue of broken homes, clinical cases of desperation and at times suicide occasioned by bet losses.

In East Africa for example, one of the regions where sports betting is enjoying fanatical following, there has been numerous reports of youth draining their savings or taking loans to participate in betting. Yet as the multibillion dollar industry continues to thrive, the youth are finding themselves worse off than they were before engaging in gambling games, with psychiatrists positing that the current addiction by a majority of young people has reached epidemic proportions, with those who loose increasingly preferring suicide.

While the proponents of gambling have always positioned it as a healthy pass time that is equally an income generator for any government, tales of addicts who are willing to do anything to gamble, and who are increasingly being ostracised by society, makes this no ordinary pastime. Various countries are already revisiting gambling laws, with others instituting complete shutdown of betting joints in a bid to rescue their youth.

While the jury is still out on whether any institution has a moral right and authority to infringe on the kind of pastime an adult of sound mind chooses to engage in, it is a black and white affair that no nation ever prospered by allowing the cream of its society: the youth believe in the easy way out. There are meaningful, decent and sustainable ways to cure unemployment in Africa among the young population. Betting isn’t one of them.